The present invention is generally related to medical, telesurgical, and/or telerobotic devices, systems, and methods. In an exemplary embodiment, the invention provides structures and methods that calibrate an end effector/telerobotic manipulator combination when a new surgical robotic tool is mounted on a manipulator arm.
Minimally invasive medical techniques are intended to reduce the amount of extraneous tissue that is damaged during diagnostic or surgical procedures, thereby reducing patient recovery time, discomfort, and deleterious side effects. While many of the surgeries performed each year in the US could potentially be performed in a minimally invasive manner, only a portion of current surgeries use these advantageous techniques due to limitations in minimally invasive surgical instruments and the additional surgical training involved in mastering them.
Minimally invasive telesurgical systems for use in surgery have been developed to increase a surgeon's dexterity and avoid some of the limitations on traditional minimally invasive techniques. In telesurgery, the surgeon uses some form of remote control (such as a servomechanism or the like) to manipulate surgical instrument movements, rather than directly holding and moving the instruments by hand. In telesurgery systems, the surgeon can be provided with an image of the surgical site at the surgical workstation. While viewing a two or three dimensional image of the surgical site on a display, the surgeon performs the surgical procedures on the patient by manipulating master control devices, which in turn control the motion of servomechanically operated instruments. The servomechanism used for telesurgery will often accept input from two master controllers (one for each of the surgeon's hands) and may include two or more robotic arms or manipulators. Mapping of the hand movements to the image displayed from the image capture device can help the surgeon provide more direct control over movement of the surgical instruments.
While the new telesurgical systems and devices have proven highly effective and advantageous, still further improvements would be desirable. For example, work in connection with the present invention has shown that misalignment between a robotic surgical end effector and an input device can decrease the useful life of some tools, and efforts to limit such misalignment can make tool and manipulator fabrication more difficult than may be ideal. As many surgical tools may be mounted on any particular manipulator during a single surgical procedure, and as tool changes will be performed while a procedure is under way, it is generally preferable to avoid and/or minimize any tool-swap related delays to the surgical procedure.
For the reasons outlined above, it would be advantageous to provide improved devices, systems, and methods for robotic surgery, telesurgery, and other telerobotic applications. It would be particularly beneficial if these improved technologies enhanced the precision and alignment of sophisticated robotic systems without significantly increasing complexity or costs, ideally allowing greater tool useful life and reliability.